Farcaster: Community update May

--- tags: CommunityUpdate --- # Farcaster: Community update May Please find below the monthly update from the community funded workgroup on Bitcoin-Monero atomic swaps. ## Node and library implementation Our current work focuses on the internal wallet of the swapping node (the walletd daemon) that isolates the secret key from the rest of the stack, the generic library that supports the swaps and its cryptographic primitives, and the interactions with the Bitcoin and Monero blockchains (what we call the syncers). We also made some improvements to the RFCs to keep them updated with the codebase. ## Farcaster overview talk in Zürich We recently held a talk in Zürich that gave an overview of the Farcaster protocol and the motivation for swaps between Bitcoin and Monero in particular, see [here](https://github.com/farcaster-project/meetings/blob/main/2021-bitcoin-meetup-zurich/presentation.pdf) for the slides. The audience was primarily from a Bitcoin background, and we received positive feedback from this very inquisitive audience, and enjoyed our interactions with the participants greatly! ## Taproot Speedy Trial BIP9 and Speedy Trial is a softfork deployment method where the miners and mining pools help to coordinate the deployment of a softfork. They do so by signaling for deployment of the softfork in their mined blocks. To lock the softfork in for activation, 90% of the blocks have to signal. The signaling method works in periods of 2016 blocks, meaning that within a 2016 block period, 90%, or 1815 of the 2016 blocks have to signal for readiness. Do note that it's not necessarily over if one period does not succeed to reach 90%, it just means that we will have to wait until the next period (Speedy Trial ends in August). The current period started on Sunday (2021-05-30 03:18) and has a current signaling ratio of 98.05%, which indicates that signaling has a high probability to succeed at the end of this period, in just short of two weeks. If the 90% readiness signaling threshold is achieved for a period, then full nodes that have upgraded to Bitcoin Core or any other compatible implementation will consider the signaling a success and activate the Taproot softfork at Bitcoin block `709632`, so approximately mid-November. Sources: - [taproot.watch](https://taproot.watch) - [PR: [0.21] Speedy trial activation for Taproot](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/21701/files) ### Why Taproot Taproot will unlock Schnorr signatures and will improve privacy on the Bitcoin chain. Adaptor signatures based on Schnorr are technically easier than ECDSA to implement which is a great advantage when it comes to implementing and auditing the code. Additionally, onchain fingerprinting is totally absent on non-adversarial swaps. These are the reasons why we want to integrate them as soon as possible, this requires more work upstream to add full support in the Rust Bitcoin ecosystem, the effort is distributed as many other projects want to take advantage of Taproot as soon as possible. ## Thank you kayaba! kayabaNerve created the first [PoC](https://github.com/MerosCrypto/asmr) of an atomic swap between Bitcoin and Monero and joined our team at its inception. Last month, kayaba shared on IRC that he decided to step back for personal reasons. We thank kayaba for his contributions and helpful ideas and wish him all the best! Hopefully, one day our paths will cross again :) ## Moving the #monero-swap IRC channel As you may have seen lately, there are issues with the IRC network Freenode caused by the new owners (https://github.com/monero-project/meta/issues/575). Additionally, we experienced some technical inconveniences on `#monero-swap` where messages from the Matrix bridge did not end up on Freenode. Similarly to the rest of Monero's channels, we are transitioning to [libera.chat](https://libera.chat) starting with our upcoming meeting on June 2nd, but we are still on Freenode for now to redirect people. Want to talk to us? Come meet us on libera `#monero-swap`. We have a weekly meeting every Wednesday at 16:00 UTC where we share the work done and organize ourselves. Logs of past meetings can be found here: https://github.com/farcaster-project/meetings ## Thank you! Would you like to contact us? Please reach out at `#monero-swap` The Farcaster team